Hacker News

Knocking on wood was about knocking on unpainted wood, so that you have actual direct physical contact with wood. Remote knocking seems to go in the other direction...

thaumasiotes 10 hours ago

> Knocking on wood was about knocking on unpainted wood, so that you have actual direct physical contact with wood.

How do you know this? For example, there is a wikipedia page section entitled "Origin of use in the English language"...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocking_on_wood#Origin_of_use...

but the contents of that section make it extremely clear that no relevant facts are known to wikipedia.

pessimizer 6 hours ago

The contents of the article make it clear that "touch wood" is basically synonymous with "knock on wood," making the knocking less important than the touching.

But is is important to mention that a ctrl-f on that page for "unpainted" is proof that you didn't spend much time looking.

couchand 8 hours ago

N >= 2

krunck 11 hours ago

There are societies where rather than knocking on wood one turns one's head and spits. For example: "Grandad is looking well after his fall, let's hope that doesn't happen again. Ptew!"

Looking for this in app form.

random_cat_8745 10 hours ago

the true SaaS (Spit as a Service).

markdown 9 hours ago

I'm imagining a thousand people in a spitshop in (Mechanical) Turkey in a sitting at desks with a spittoon, waiting for a signal to spit.

skinfaxi 10 hours ago

Found this other experiment, part of the same series "Machines Responding to Superstitions".

https://www.dezeen.com/2023/10/31/kinky-kashayam-portable-bl...

Though it seems less like machine response than humans integrating technology into superstitious belief.

TehCorwiz 11 hours ago

If an app knocks on a tree and nobody is around…

jagged-chisel 7 hours ago

… go on

Isamu 4 hours ago

Wait, is the tree in a VM?

merek 4 hours ago

...does it still display ads?

psadri 6 hours ago

Whoever created this - you are the crazy kind of person I want to meet in real life.

dr_pyser 4 hours ago

I never had to knock on wood

gosen 10 hours ago

I can't explain why but it's amazing! Maybe because in my culture "knocking on the wood 3 times" helps to avoid the bad luck and I lived with that for 20 years, or maybe it's just fun to imagine that you're knocking on the wood remotely ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

dvh 11 hours ago

It's like FakeBlock from Arrested development

fancyswimtime 9 hours ago

knock on cousin remotely

itissid 11 hours ago

I am ratting this out to the Tree Beard

ButlerianJihad 9 hours ago

Nothing can surprise me. Every day at college, I would walk past these "Trees".

https://stuartcollection.ucsd.edu/artist/allen.html#about-th...

Cpoll 10 hours ago

Looking forward to one that will let me touch grass from my computer.

lofaszvanitt 9 hours ago

You have to do it with a right hand, from under. So this is 100% fake.

classified 11 hours ago

The knockers are missing solar panels to continuously charge their batteries. So there will be sustained costs to keep them running. And how water-proof are they? Apart from that, it's going to sell like hot cakes.

tinyplanets 11 hours ago

Or just, you know, walk outside in the fresh air, find a nearby tree, and knock on it...

dimatter 11 hours ago

r/whoosh

slipperybeluga 7 hours ago

[dead]